


Nerilka's Story: The B-Side

by silveradept



Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [11]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey
Genre: Abuse, Classism, Commentary, Domestic Violence, F/M, Meta, Misogyny, Nonfiction, Patriarchy, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexism, Slut Shaming, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Swearing, evil stepmother, misnaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:49:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23595616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/pseuds/silveradept
Summary: A commentary read with excerpts of Nerilka's Story, the second of the Sixth Pass works, part of the Dragonriders of Pern.
Relationships: Alessan/Nerilka (Dragonriders of Pern)
Series: The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits: The Dragonriders of Pern [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663699
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	1. The Hero Of Another Story

**Author's Note:**

> This is the Director's Cut of meta originally posted at [Slacktiverse](https://slacktiverse.wordpress.com).
> 
> Content notes for each chapter are in their respective posts, and all content notes in the work are in the tags.
> 
> Director's commentary will be rendered _[in a manner like this.]_

Well, that was a ride, wasn't it? If only that ending hadn't fallen flat on its face, we might have finally escaped a Pern novel where women did cool things without being hurt by the narrative or the men in their lives. Alas, we have to try again, this time with Nerilka's Story, written about the same time as Moreta.

**Nerilka's Story, Prologue and Chapter I: Content Notes: Domestic Abuse, Misogyny, Survivor Guilt**

The Prologue for this novel opens thus...

> If the reader is unfamiliar with the series **The Dragonriders of Pern** , certain confusions may occur. **Nerilka's Story** is an ancillary tale to **Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern** , told from the point of view of one of the minor characters in that novel.

_[And the Cocowhat comes out early.]_

...and I'm already ready to spend a Whatfruit. Sorry, you don't get married to one of the main characters at the end if you're a minor character. Nor do you assist both the Masterhealer and that same main character in the production and distribution of vaccination and medical supplies as a minor character. Nerilka is out of frame a lot of the time, because the narrative chooses to follow Alessan, Capiam, and Moreta around, but she's not a minor character. 

She's the [Hero of Another Story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroOfAnotherStory), where lots of important stuff happens to make sure there's still a Pern left for the dragonriders and Healers to save.

This Prologue focuses on telling the story of the colonists who lost contact and developed a very long-term plan to combat Thread, using people with innate telepathy and fire-breathing, safeties-off teleporting dragons in the air, and the grubs on the ground, derived from the same strain of organism that Thread is. Once having gone north, the traditions (TRADITION!) of the riders and the ground-dwellers became as good as laws. It's the same as Moreta from this point on, so all the complaints from that prologue apply here as well.

Our prologue time marker here is 1541, near the end of the Sixth Pass again. Except that Chapter I is marked as 3.11.1553 - during Interval, and explicitly marked as such.

This is the first time we've seen a year marker that's not related to the Pass. Apparently, at least in the Holds, there is actually some form of calendar system that days back to an epoch regarding the settlers, and that extends past the Passes and their very a-historical worldview. What else have we been missing out on by focusing so strongly on the dragonrider way of keeping time?

The frame, then, is that Nerilka is telling us her own recollection of what happened during the Great Plague, with explicit disclaimer that Nerilka lacks the skills of the Harper. And unsubtly telling us that she has severe survivor's guilt about the whole thing, even if she feels that she has finally managed to readjust her attitude toward death after this long time.

The story starts with Tolocamp leaving for the Ruatha Gather. Nerilka did not wave goodbye to the traveling party, a lack of gesture that would haunt her for a significant time afterward. Right now, though, the focus is on the mood at Fort.

> Campen is a fine fellow, despite a lack of any vestige of humor and little sensitivity. There is not a devious bone in his body. As his entire plan was to amaze my father with his industry and efficiency in managing the Hold, it also required my parents' safe return. I could have told poor Campen that all the approval he was likely to receive was a grunt from Father, who would have expected industry and efficiency from his son and heir.  
>  [...the rest of the Hold was giving Tolocamp a send-off, anyway, so...]  
>  No one world have noticed my defection. Except, perhaps, my sharp-eyed sister Avilla, who missed nothing that she might use to her advantage at a later date.

And here there is an illustration, the first I have seen in all the editions that I have been examining to this point, of a fatherly figure placing his hands in his son's as a group looks on. Perhaps this is an incentive to buy the book - actual pictures. (Or, at this point, the creation of electronic books has finally matured enough to have pictures included. Since this is also the first of the versions to have the actual cover art, I suspect there have been other pictures before and my editions have not been able to license them. Anyway.)

_[Turns out that illusrations are very rare for Pern books at all, so this is the first one I've seen with actual pictures. The e-book copy I was reading inserted the pictures in the middle of the text, because, unlike traditional printing, e-text isn't formatted to work for specific paper sizes, and so you can't set it up to have the text on one page and the illustration on another. So what were probably very carefully chosen places to insert the illustrations turned out to be pretty useless while I was reading, because my e-text size and page size didn't correspond to the printed version.]_

> In truth, while I certainly wished then no harm, since Threadfall had been endured the day before with no infestations to ravage the winter fields, I couldn't have wished them merry on their way. For I had been left behind on purpose, and it had been hard indeed to listen to my sisters' prattling about their vain hopes for conquests at the Ruatha Gather and know the festivities would not include me.  
>  To be excluded in such a peremptory fashion, a flick of my sire's wrist to strike me from the travel list, was another insensitive act of judgment. Typical of him when human feelings are concerned - at least typical of his attitudes and judgments until he came back from Ruatha and immured himself in his apartments all those long weeks.  
>  There was no real reason to have excluded me.

Pleading with her mother produces no help, as Nerilka's appeal is that Alessan's dead wife, Suriana, would have welcomed her had she lived. Which leads to talk of marriageability, and Nerilka is trying to talk sense into her mother about the real prospects of her sisters, which ticks her mother off.

Although we'll want to check details and consistency between the two books, because Nerilka admits to bring an unreliable narrator, in these first few pages of action, we've already gotten a much closer look at what Hold life and family politics are than in the previous books. One straightforward brother, one catty sister, one uncaring father, one mother more obsessed with marrying her daughters off than anything. It's not quite Survivor: Pern, but we have all the types and more of either a situation comedy or a teen drama. Reading onward, it appears to be a teen drama, although one with greater consequences than a normal one.

Nerilka is ordered to supervise the bathing of the drudges, and to clean out the lower level snake traps, and to improve her attitude or else her mother will tell Tolocamp to discipline her. "His hand weighed as heavy on the oldest and biggest of us as it did in the youngest." So, much like Yanus, Tolocamp has no qualms about beating his children. 

As she takes out her frustration on drudges that aren't scrubbing hard enough with the soapsand, Nerilka reflects and ultimately regrets how she handled the situation, for tactical (likely prejudiced against getting to go to another Gather) and empathetic (it's not Mom's fault her daughters are plain) reasons.

Here we also get a situation where the later book calls back to the earlier and raises some questions. From Moreta, Capiam said that the journeymen and apprentices for the Healer Craft had called the children the Horde, but presumably had only done so in the privacy of their own halls. Nerilka tells us that the Harpers have done the same, at least in the apprentice ranks, and that they were indelicate enough to say so around her or someone in the family that passed it on to her. Which would suggest that Tolocamp also knows about this. And yet, it appears to not have been ruthlessly squashed by anybody. Perhaps they know the Streisand Effect would come into play?

Furthermore, I'm not entirely sure why supervising bathing is considered a punishment for Nerilka. Wouldn't someone concerned about her womanly virtue not want to put her info close proximity with naked bodies, especially those bodies that might belong to a permanent underclass that might want to make trouble with her? Surely Lessa can't be an outlier. Unless we're supposed to believe that all drudges are like Camo, suffering from sufficient mental disabilities that they require constant supervision. That can't be true, though, because Nerilka pulled an impressive ruse with the drudges in the last book. (And will do so again in this book.) Plus, we've seen drudges work in the kitchens, and I don't see many societies putting people they don't trust to do things properly with sharp objects and foodstuffs. Then again, when Lessa was in the kitchens screwing everything up for Fax, it was apparently easy and neither supervisors nor the actual drudges seemed to notice that things were wrong or going that way, so I'm not sure I have a conclusion about what conclusion we're supposed to draw about the intelligence of the drudges. Which leaves me stuck without a conclusion as to why supervising their bathing is supposed to be a punishment, nor why Nerilka feels safe among them enough to scrub harder for them when she feels they aren't doing it properly.

At least cleaning the snake traps on the lower level seems like an appropriate kind of punishment to do, although tunnel snakes seem to be dangerous enough that there's also a risk of harm. Perhaps the fact that there are so many children makes both parents more cavalier about their safety.

Nerilka spends some time noting that the entirety of the daughters of the family, save perhaps the youngest, are all plain, and all the sons are beautiful, which means the marriage prospects of the daughters are dismal at best, for even being the daughter of Fort's Holder isn't enough to be marriageable. She also reminisces about Suriana, Alessan's dead wife, in whose hold Nerilka fostered, and with whom Nerilka gained greatly in the womanly arts and was always better than she is alone.

Nerilka's singular skill that she has is healing, but the Healer Hall was forbidden to her because it would deprive Fort of free Healer-like services courtesy of her. Given what we know of the Fort storerooms from Nerilka's ruse in Moreta, it's probably safe to say this free family labor accounts for a lot of the hoard produced by the horde. (RDR^2)

The next paragraph is the first of what I suspect will be many instances of survivor's guilt and regret at not treating people better before they die in tragedy.

> Now I am appalled at the heedless, uncharitable girl I was that day, unable to swallow disappointment and pride to bid her luckier sisters farewell. For it proved that their luck had run out when they were chosen to attend Ruatha's Gather. But who could have foreseen that, much less the plague, on the bright cold-season day?

As they say, hindsight is 20/20. That doesn't mean there won't be regrets, and that Nerilka probably could have used grief counselors then (and quite probably is writing this as her attempt at getting through all of it, since Pern continues to be a world without mental health professionals), but we're getting this story from the perspective of someone that survived it.

Nerilka is playing the Horatio role here - she's the designated survivor, tasked with passing the story on, and specifically spared from the ravages that other characters suffered by the narrative. No Fortinbras at this point, though. 

Telling the story would normally be the role of the Harpers, but the song that Tirone composed has clearly made a hash of the necessary details that should be carried on, either as a propaganda piece or as a song that's supposed to be the collective memory of Pern about what was learned from this plague experience. Or the version that survived to Ninth Pass has degraded from the original to the point that it's useless. So now we also have Nerilka penning a memoir of what happened. (Now that I think about it, they refer to Records, but without specifically mentioning what is in them. Probably to keep them conveniently able to pull whatever's needed when the plot demands, but it has the knock-on effect of this story possibly being the first acknowledged memoir of Pern history. If that's true, then there's going to be something special about this story that has resulted in its preservation.)

Nerilka's hindsight continues by telling us that she didn't put together the drum messages about the "feline" and the ones that followed asking the Masterhealer to go to Igen. Nerilka is confused as to why she's not supposed to let on that she (and the entire family) knows drum code - I personally think it's because everybody enjoys the feeling of knowing a Harper secret and that nobody wants to have the Harpers change anything, which they totally would if someone admitted they knew the secret to the drum code. I strongly suspect the Harpers actually know that drum code is nearly universally known, and they use it anyway because it's still the fastest method of transmitting and broadcasting information short of dragon courier (or, eventually, Fandarel's telegraph, which ends up using drum code anyway as its mechanism).

Nerilka staying at home allows her to avoid the oldest son, Campen, described as someone cut from the same cloth as Tolocamp, preferring to delegate everything and then criticize the results of someone else's work, to the point that Nerilka notes when Tolocamp dies, the smooth operation of the Hold will basically be unaffected. She does this mostly by saying she's going out to gather herbs and roots and other medicinal plants, which doesn't actually happen in the cold season, but only people who do the work (or pay attention) actually realize this, and so Nerilka takes herself and three siblings out to have a day off, returning with wild plants and a wherry for their efforts. Campen provides us another piece of the drudge puzzle by complaining about "the fecklessness of drudges who worked well only under supervision" at dinner, a complaint so common in the household that Nerilka has to make sure it wasn't Tolocamp who said it. I'm beginning to think that the perception of drudges is that they are lazy, regardless of the actual industry and capability of the drudges themselves. This provides a convenient excuse for abuse and discounting any other reality as individuals behaving outside the norm, as well as an excuse for maintaining the drudge underclass, because clearly such lazy people couldn't take care of themselves and need proper permanent supervision from their masters. Nobody mentions, of course, whether all the drudges are black and all the Holders are white, because that might be a little too on the nose for a Terran equivalence.

_[There's never really an in-text resolution to the status of the drudges, and the Todd books will complicate the matters by adding the Shunned as an Untouchable class to go along with the permanent slave class. For the most part, it doesn't get resolved because neither author is interested enough in the drudges past the point of "they do stuff so the household continues to run", but in the comments, outside of the text materials and statements suggest that Pern was intended to be a meritocracy. Since it's a meritocracy as Ayn Rand might have thought of it, this leads to the conclusion that the drudges are drudges on Pern because they're either too lazy to make better of themselves, and thus deserve to be slaves who do all of the heavy labor, the repetitive labor, and the unthanked, "unskilled" labor (with, of course, no way of deciding theyv'e had enough of this and rising out of that class, because class mobility is not for drudges), or they're people with mental difficulties, learning disabilities, or other impairments, which apparently means they're fair game to be abused and enslaved to do this work. Neither of these prospects is particularly appealing, because exploiting the disabled like that is a bad take (even if it's fairly accurate and still happening in 21st c. Terra) and the assumptions about human nature and laziness are simply wrong. Most of the studies we have done of people say that they want to be productive and do meaningful work. Most of our economic systems do not care about this, and instead insist that people get jobs that allow them to continue living so they can meet the basics of Maslow's hierarchy. Instead of an egalitarian paradise where everyone shares, we have a Randian utopia where there are a few people with all the power and wealth and everyone else has nothing, and everyone believes with an unshakeable faith that they deserve to be where they are and should not actively try to change their situation or instigate any sort of revolution for a better governmental system.]_

Nerilka returns to the matter of marriage prospects by telling us about the one suitor she had, that she liked, but his Hold was too small for Tolocamp to part with a daughter for. Suriana had hoped to get Nerilka away to Ruatha long enough for Nerilka to stop thinking about her horrible situation at home, but when Suriana broke her back from being thrown by a runnerbeast, that hope went away. Nerilka is somewhat suspicious of the official story of Suriana's death, because Capiam was tight-lipped about the details, instead of his usually more chatty self.

We get no more information, though, because that suspicion is the last paragraph of this introductory chapter. The beginning of the next chapter is the quarantine order from Capiam, which apparently comes through "at precisely the same hour" that Nerilka learned about Suriana's death.

Wait, that can't be right. The last book says that Alessan had been grieving his wife for almost a year (or just over a year) when the Gather arrives that kicks off the plague. Something like the death of a Lady Holder would be public gossip, and especially if the Gather was going to be a thing for young eligible women to try and turn Alessan's eye. I can't see Nerilka somehow not knowing about Suriana's death until almost a year afterward, especially if she knows drum code and even more so with the family that she has. In fact, the reason that Nerilka is banned from the trip is because she mentions Suriana's death. 

There must be something else to that sentence. Maybe "the same hour" means the equivalent of "at 9am, the same time of day I received the fateful phone call about Suriana a year ago" or "the same day of the year when I learned Suriana died last year."

Words, they are difficult even with the best intentions. Let's see how well Nerilka handles hers.

_[It was pointed out in the comments to this entry that Nerilka's unreliability of narration probably extends to her self-assessment of all the daughters of Tolocamp as plain. Since she's been abused throughout her childhood, there's a good chance that she's internalized whatever she's been told about herself, because that's how she survives in this environment, regardless of its truth value. I don't want to suggest that everyone on Pern is a classical model of beauty, but it's worth remembering in what directions Nerilka's trauma will interfere with her ability to accurately recount everything that happened.]_


	2. Avengers, Assemble

Last chapter, we took a look at how the author marginalized Nerilka in the prologue, then made hay about the presence of year markers, indicating some form of calendar system and long-term memory not previously present, and closed out with the beginning of the story, with Nerilka missing out on the Gather by aggravating her mother.

**Nerilka's Story: Chapters II and III: Content Notes: Verbal abuse, classism**

(3.11.43-3.12.43, 1541)

Chapter II opens with Capiam's quarantine booming out across the land. Those that understand assemble with the Harper and Healer staff of the Hold to get instruction and explanation from Fortine and Desdra, representing the Healers, and Brace and Dunegrine, representing the Harpers. Fortine asks anyone who has been to either Gather to present themselves for examination to Desdra, after which he will address all the Healers while Brace briefs the Harpers. The entire sequence makes Nerilka suspicious, as Capiam doesn't usually delegate.

On her way to check on the supplies in the storeroom, Nerilka is stopped by Campen, who asks a few questions about what's going on before catching himself.

> "Rill, what's abroad? Did I hear quarantine? Does that mean Father is stuck at Ruatha? What do we do now?" He recalled that if he was acting Lord Holder, he ought not to be requesting advice from any lesser entities, especially his sister. He cleared his throat noisily and poked his chest forward, assuming a stern expression that I found ludicrous. "Have we sufficient fresh herbs for our people?"  
>  "Indeed we do."  
>  "Don't be flippant, Rill. Not at a time like this." He frowned ponderously at me.  
>  "I'm on my way to assess the situation, brother, but I can say without fear of contradiction that our supplies will prove more than adequate for the present emergency."  
>  "Very good, but be sure to give me a written report of supplies on hand." He patted my shoulder as he would his favorite canine and bustled off, huffling as he went. To my jaundiced eye, he appeared unsure as to what he should be doing in this catastrophe.

(Jaundice? That word survives? Does that mean the condition does, too? It's an interesting exercise trying to figure out why certain words remain in Pern...)

Nerilka sounds like there's some schadenfreude involved in seeing Campen realizing that he might actually have to run the place, instead of just supervise. Campen isn't helping himself much by puffing himself up, but he probably doesn't have many coping mechanisms and he's likely been taught, both implicitly and explicitly, that the person in charge cannot ever appear to be unsure or seek advice in the running of the Hold, let they appear weak and lose the respect of the people.

Here, also, we're getting the Rill nickname out of the way quickly - since the secret is already out, as of the last book, the nickname can be freely used. Earlier books inform later ones.

Nerilka's visit to the storeroom reveals a lot about the people running Fort and what's going on in the world.

> Sometimes I am appalled at the waste in our storerooms. In spring, summer, and autumn, we gather, preserve, salt, dry, pickle, and store more food than ever [sic] Fort Hold could need. Each Turn, despite Mother's conscientious efforts, the oldest is not used first, and gradually the backlog grows. The tunnel snakes and insects take care of that in the darker recesses of the supply caves. We girls often make judicious withdrawals to be smuggled out to needy families, as neither Father nor Mother condone charity, even when harvests have failed through no fault of the holder. Father and Mother are always saying that it is their ancient duty to supply the entire Hold in time of crisis, but somehow they have never defined "crisis." And we keep increasing the unused and unusable stores.  
>  Of course herbs, properly dried and stored, keep their efficacy for many Turns. The shelves of neat bags and bound stalks, the jars of seeds and salves bulged. Sweatroot, featherfern, all the febrifuges, that had been traditional remedies since Records began. Comfrey, aconite, thymus, hissop, ezob: I touched each in turn, knowing we had it in such quantities that Fort Hold could treat every one of the nearly ten thousand inhabitants if necessary. Fellis had been a bumper crop this Turn. Had the land known its future needs? Aconite, too, was in generous supply.

I think I can say confidently at this point that Tolocamp and Pendra suck at being Lord Holders. Not because they try to preserve and store food and medicines away in case of a future crisis (after all, dragonriders still demand tribute, regardless of how your harvest went, and it's quite possible that Thread will keep you indoors for a very long time), but because they store too much and then refuse to get rid of it before it spoils. If they disapprove of charity, then they fail at converting their excess into mark pieces or other, more durable, goods. They also fail at winning goodwill and strengthening ties by refusing to use their excess to keep vassals with poor harvests healthy and fed. Unhappy vassals start trouble. So one must wonder whether Tolocamp has had to fight off unhappy Holders coming at him with knives. And perhaps we have part of the reason why other Holders aren't so willing to attach themselves to Tolocamp.

In any case, in addition to the supplies, there are some very old bound tomes that constitute the medical Records - recipes for medicine and the notes of Healers. The oldest Records, supposedly dating to the flight of the Ancients, are crumbling in Nerilka's hands, with their ink already faded away. In the Ninth Pass, Harper archivists are busily copying and recopying old Records - do they not exist in Sixth Pass? (And what about Fandarel's ink recovery process?) It seems that people so very concerned with hoarding everything would not be so lax as to let old knowledge die. As Nerilka looks through more recent records, she realizes that everyone could be affected by the disease. Which induces panic mode until a drudge comes to fetch her to the kitchens and talk to the cook.

Sim, our second named drudge of this entire series, takes a message from Nerilka to be delivered "into the hand of Journeywoman Desdra only!", to which "Sim bobbed his head up and down, smiling his vapid smile and murmuring reassurances." So both of our named drudges appear to have mental issues. I'm not really liking this trend, as well as the indeterminate status of the other drudges.

_[The comments pointed out that there was a third named drudge from Dragondrums, Besel, and that the Nabolese drudges don't behave at all like the mentally disabled ones like Camo and Sim. Which gets us back to the problem of the drudges not having enough focus to be coherent.]_

Felim, the cook, has been told to prepare for for an undetermined number of guests, which makes him nervous because he "had been so often chastised by my mother for 'wastefulness' that his only defense was showing her the records of how many ate at which meal and what was served them." Another strike against Pendra, who seems to have a sadistic steak in stark contrast to her busybody matchmaker characterization in Moreta.

After promising to find out how many are coming to dinner, Nerilka has to talk sense into Campen about how many people would actually be coming to Fort to dine, considering Capiam's quarantine order is still in effect. Nerilka then makes an executive decision to increase the normal meal only by a quarter portion and add more cheese and biscuits, and then gets the older relatives to start converting spare rooms into infirmary units, while her favorite uncle, the one she thinks should have been Lord Holder, goes into the Records to see if something can be found to help the Healers figure it out. (He's referred to as a pensioner, too, which is another one of those odd vocabulary choices, since I don't think the concept of the pension works on a works like Pern.) Before he does so, the uncle relays that Capiam is ill with the disease.

The chapter ends with the dinner, whose guests included more minor Holders than expected and all the Crafthall Masters, save the Healers and the Harpers. There's still more than enough food and drink to cover everyone, and logistics without breaking quarantine is the topic for the Masters and Holders to talk about long into the night, while Nerilka pours klah, and then goes to study old Records afterward.

Chapter III picks up the next day, with a pair of drum messages, one just "terrifying", and one more from Ratoshigan requesting assistance from the Healers. As Nerilka heads to the Harper Hall, more drum messages roll in, with the casualties, the fatalities, and the requests for Healers. And offers of assistance from those places not affected yet.

Then come the reports from the Weyrs, and at this point, Nerilka's image of dragonriders as invincible gods (or their avatars) crumbles swiftly.

> Why I had thought that dragonriders would be immune from this disease, I do not know, except that they seemed so invulnerable astride their great beasts, seemingly untouched by the ravages of Thread - though I knew well enough that dragons and riders were badly scored - and impervious to minor ailments and anxieties that were visited on lesser folk.

Nerilka's not wrong here, though - dragonriders don't till land or make craft things that have to be sold or otherwise do anything other than what relates to the care and feeding of dragons and the destruction of Thread. Plus, dragonriders don't interact with the average Holder, or even big Holders, on a daily basis. Their rituals are secret and mysterious, and their sexual practices are clearly more freewheeling that the system of tightly guarded female sexuality that the Holds use. A mythology about them was bound to develop, because dragonriders hit all the high points of myths and legends. To see them exposed as mortal beings after all is a confidence-shaking blow. Further eroding confidence is the knowledge that Capiam, the Masterhealer, is down with the flu and Fortine is on the drums. So, dragonriders are affected by this, the Masterhealer is down, and thus everyone could be engaged in a full panic.

But they're not visibly doing so, possibly because Thread has basically made them need a higher grade of disaster to start panic. Nerilka can see the signs of strain on Desdra's face, even as Nerilka offers the stores of Fort to the Healer. When Desdra attempts to placate her, Nerilka informs her that she knows "every drum code but the Masterharper's, and can guess at that." as a way of telling Desdra to cut the bullshit. (Although, "every drum code" still makes me wonder how the Harpers manage to fit the language into, essentially, drumbeat measures.)

Before Nerilka can convince Desdra to grab what she can, Tolocamp returns on the dragon he commandeered from Ruatha and demands the immediate dispersal of all the Holders, Crafters, and others who had gathered at Fort, because of the quarantine order from Capiam. As Tolocamp shoves people around for emphasis (demonstrating his contempt for others), the courtyard clears and Tolocamp turns his baleful eyes on his family.

> Father turned on us all, for my brothers had come to investigate the unexpected arrival of a dragon.  
>  "Have you run mad to assemble folk? Did none of you pay heed to Capiam's warning? They're dying like flies at Ruatha!"  
>  "Then why are you here, sir?" my rather stupid brother Campen had the gall to ask.  
>  "What did you say?" Father drew himself up like a dragon about to flame, and even Campen drew back from the contained fury in his stance. How Campen escaped a clout I did not then understand.  
>  "But-but-but Capiam said quarantine..."

That's the thing with abusers, Campen. They don't follow logic when others use it, only when they do it, and their logic doesn't have to follow actual logic. If your logic contradicts their worldview, you are wrong, regardless of what reality says.

That said, I do wonder how Tolocamp has managed not to get a knife in the back, or the front, with the way he manhandles others, on top of the abuse of his children. That kind of attitude would surely put him on the wrong end of dragonriders somewhere, because Tolocamp surely couldn't contain his rage and would strike one of his betters. Or that they would decide he needed to go for one reason or another. Or maybe I'm being optimistic and Tolocamp knows exactly where the line is and endeavors to make sure he's always on the right side of it while he perpetuates his abuses. Worked pretty well for Yanus.

Tolocamp declares himself in quarantine (in person, to his family), and then rushes off, leaving the kids to pick up the pieces. A muffled sob is the only clue Nerilka needs to realize that Tolocamp is the only person coming back from Ruatha, and so she turns her attention to making sure none of the siblings panic about the quarantine by referencing their hardiness. Mostar points out they all had chicken pox or smallpox ("the spotted fever") and it seems to help break tension as Theskin points out the danger of breaking quarantine.

After uneasy sleep, Nerilka wakes up in the middle of the night and goes to check on Tolocamp. The instruction list is for wine, food, febrifuges, and for his mistress, Anella, and her children. After assuring us that Lady Pendra knew about it, and was sometimes glad for it, Nerilka tells us what she really thinks about Anella:

> But I didn't like Anella. She simpered, she clung, and if Father couldn't pretend interest in her, she was quite happy on Mostar's arm. Indeed, I think she hoped to be wed to my brother. I longed to tell her that Mostar had other ideas. Still, I wondered if her last son was my father's issue or Mostar's.  
>  I chided myself for such snide thoughts.

Because, of course, what this story really, really needs right now is one woman calling another a gold digger. If we recall from The White Dragon and how Jaxom had his way with Corana, and with consideration to Tolocamp's (and Mostar's) position, who wants to lay bets against the idea that some form of coercion, stated or unstated, is part of the relationship, and that Anella has probably adopted this persona so that she can continue to be in favor with Tolocamp instead of trying to figure out how to feed the extra mouths thanks to her miserly Lords? 

On the plot, Nerilka runs the instructions for supplies and foodstuffs herself, leaving Campen with he duty of figuring out how to sneak Anella and family in. When he complains to her about it, she points out how little Tolocamp cares about their preferences and goes over to the nurseries. Her tactical eye points out that they could seal themselves off if needed, so she makes a note to send up more supplies before going over to the Wash Aunt (despite having referenced Aunt Lucil as in charge of the nursery just a paragraph before, and Aunt Sira, in charge of the weavers, this aunt apparently doesn't warrant a name, just a job title) to suggest today is a really good day to wash a lot of things.

> She was a good person, but tended to procrastinate out of a mistaken motion that her drudges were woefully overworked. I knew Mother always had to give her a push to get started. I didn't like to think that I was usurping any of my mother's duties, even in a temporary basis, but we might be in need of every length of clean linen ever woven in the Hold.

And again we have this Hold narrative that drudges are idle or underworked characters. In this particular case, we're supposed to believe that those who do the washing aren't being worked hard enough.

Which, um, no. [Laundry has always been an arduous task, and the technological innovations that have happened on Terra have not mitigated that reality](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mfr/4919087.0011.104?rgn=main;view=fulltext), so a place like Pern, which is deliberately trying to avoid electricity, is never going to have a time where the drudges that do laundry are somehow underworked. What would the Wash Aunt know, though, compared to Nerilka, since the unnamed Wash Aunt only sees the work done every day by the drudges.

Nerilka has a perfectly good reason to request a big wash, because of the need for clean linen, but she doesn't need to color it with more of the bullshit idea that drudges are fundamentally lazy. 

_[It's also possible that this unnamed Wash Aunt has figured out that if you treat your people well, you get better work out of them, or she thinks of the drudges as people instead of tools, and therefore has concerns for them about how much rest they're getting, what kind of work they're doing, their overall health, those sorts of important things that are ignored by Lord Holders and CEOs alike. Since she's not high enough in the hierarchy to implement changes Hold-wide, she's going to be seen as the weird wash aunt who humanizes her drudges, but one could hope that Nerilka eventually comes around to her mode of thinking and does a much better job with personnel management. Then again, this is Pern, where the worse outcomes are almost guaranteed, assuming the author doesn't somehow find a way of showing you a new worst.]_

After the wash, Nerilka checks in with the weavers and takes a short breakfast in the nook her mother users. Then she has to deal with finding quarters for Anella and her family - two babies, parents, three brothers, and six elders.

> Anella pouted a bit at being assigned rooms so far from Tolocamp, but neither Campen nor I paid any attention to her remarks or to those of her shrewish mother. I was just relieved the entire hold had not descended on us. I suspected the older two brothers had more sense than to chance their arms on their pert sister's prospects. Although I felt Anella ought to be well able to care for her children, I did assign her two servants, one from the Nursery level and a general. I wished to have no complaints from my father about her reception or quarters. Any guest would have had as much courtesy from me. But I didn't have to like it.

Do tell us how you feel, Nerilka, about all of this, and how you've been inculcated with cultural values that set women against each other.

In the evening, Nerilka notes errors in the drums as the drummers get tired, and greater pleas for healers and relief from the disease. Even though Nerilka uses earplugs, pulses echo through her brain in the form of the bad news of the day. And that's how Chapter Three ends.

I might note that Nerilka is a competent administrator of the household right from the beginning, as she starts the rounds, makes decisions to handle situations, and basically keeps the place running, while Campen flounders on everything and has no crisis management skills. So Nerilka is basically the perfect wife for someone, except that she's not pretty, which means her talents are taken for granted and only one man is interested in having her as his wife. Nerilka will probably not receive any sort of acknowledgement or thanks for her skills from anyone, not even Campen. He will likely get all the praise that is rightly hers, even though she's much more likely to be doing the things that keep everyone alive and healthy. Not every part of Latin Christendom has to be replicated in a story like this.


	3. The Tragedy Compounds, With Interest

Last chapters: Nerilka, meet worldwide epidemic. Epidemic, meet a competent planner, administrator, and Healer who will be hampered by the fact that she's female and her family is unlikely to be any sort of helpful - Tolocamp is self-quarantined, and Campen is unqualified to lead in a crisis.

Oh, yes, and speaking of Tolocamp, he abandoned Pendra and some of his daughters to the known plague zone as he broke the quarantine.

**Nerilka's Story: Chapters IV and V: Content Notes: Evil Stepmothers, misnaming**

(3.14.43-3.15.43)

Chapter 4 opens with the drums pounding again - one of Nerilka's earplugs had fallen out. Which means Nerilka can hear quite clearly as the drums beat out the death of her mother and sisters at Ruatha. The remaining children grieve privately at the loss, with the exception of Campen, and Nerilka wonders whether anyone, in addition to her, had hoped that it had been Tolocamp instead of her mother and sisters.

If only she could hear us outside the narrative, all of us that are very tired of having women be sacrificed for narrative and plot, and especially this one so that it can set up a bitchy rivalry and get the mistress into the household to cause trouble. Twice, while Nerilka is raiding the storeroom to help Desdra and the Healers stay stocked, she spots Anella in the area, and is unhappy about her Holder duties being potentially usurped:

> Clearly I heard my father's vigorous voice calling out the window, and I saw Anella lurking just round the first bend in the corner. Quick as a snake, she scuttled away, but the gloating smirk on her face on her face provoked me past indifference to active dislike and disgust of her.  
>  [...down in the storeroom, Nerilka summons Sim at a shriek, then apologizes to the Healer for overburdening him...but not to Sim, despite his clear fear that something bad was going to happen to him...]  
>  ...I caught sight of Anella sweeping down the steps, beckoning imperiously to Felim. I knew that if I entered the main kitchen and saw that smug little lay-aback playing Lady Holder, I would rue the outcome.

So it's going to be Official Mistress versus Lady Holder for control of Fort. If it's not abundantly clear at this point, **_this story idea can go fucking die in a fire_**. Plus, Nerilka gets some extra salt in her wounds as she goes by the Harper Hall - Tirone is, of course, safe and sound, having avoided the plague to this point. While Nerilka catches some of the Harper joy for herself, it is quickly erased by the details of Tolocamp's sentries refusing entry or exit to Healers or Harpers and the presence of the internment camp for the sick and for the Healers.

> The healer eyed me with some consternation, for this smacked of criticism of the Lord Holder. I could not in conscience show any trace of my growing disgust, disillusionment, and distrust of my sire. And obviously I should not have heard such sentiment.

Wait, what? Why should a Crafthall worry about insulting a Lord Holder? The Crafts are independent of the Holds, and the Holds have to trade with the Crafts for their simple and advanced goods. The Harpers, especially, since they're the only official teachers. Yes, there's something to be said for staying on good terms with the Lord Holder so that you don't end up outside during Threadfall, but the way Nerilka describes this makes it sound like there's a more official prohibition on criticizing the overlord and their decisions. I wonder when it came into being, and also how the Lords Holder ever try to enforce those prohibitions.

After inquiring about Capiam's health and urging Desdra to take advantage of her help and supply access as much as possible, Nerilka instructs Sim to tell her where the internment camp is and makes plans for how to make sure everyone there has proper supplies, as well as how to make sure that Harpers and Healers are unimpeded by the guards (as much as possible). From there, she heads to the kitchens. Felim is entirely a-tizzy, trying to decide whether Anella's demands for "all kinds of foods that I [Felim] know Lady Pendra would not condone" should be taken to heart or politely ignored.

> "She said she was to order Hold matters now. And I was to prepare broth for her children, whose stomachs are delicate; and there are to be confections with every meal, for her parents desire sweets; and roasts midday and evening. Lady Nerilka, you know that isn't possible." Tears streamed down his cheeks again as he shrugged. "Must I take orders from her now?"  
>  "I'll find out, Felim. Proceed with the plans we made this morning. Not even for Anella can we alter an established routine in one day."  
>  [...and then...]  
>  That little lay-aback, coming in here and thinking she could just take over a Hold the size of Fort and run it if it were exactly like the backhills midden from which she'd come! The thought of the chaos that would shortly result at such inexpert hands gave me a perverse delight. Little did Anella know of real management, and if she wished to to keep my father content, she'd better learn. Whatever had made her think that just because Lady Pendra was dead, she was to step into her shoes, just as she had taken her bed partner? Unless...  
>  [...something bad happens, that is. Something that distresses the other children...]  
>  "Father has had her transferred into Mother's rooms. Already!"

Hrm. This sounds suspiciously like a situation where Tolocamp wants to disown his own entire family. It is pretty clear by this point that Tolocamp and Pendra did not have a loving relationship between themselves or their children (thus, Anella as the open, acknowledged, mistress-shaped secret between them), but the speed at which it appears Anella is to ascend to Lady Holder makes it pretty clear to me that Tolocamp does not give a damn about his current children.

Nerilka quips that the speed might be because Tolocamp has the plague and wants to enjoy his remaining time on the planet. Campen is offended, but the remaining siblings are more on board with that joke, before they go off to change the guard for the interment camp and do their other tasks.

As it turns out, Tolocamp wastes no time at all installing Anella as Lady Holder. Dinner that night has Anella read out a pronouncement:

> "I, Lord Tolocamp, quarantined from active participation in the conduct of Fort Hold in these unsettled days, appoint and deputize Lady Anella as Lady Holder to ensure the management of the Hold until such time as our desired union can be publicly celebrated. My son, Campen, will actively discharge under my direction any duties required of the Lord Holder until such time as I am no longer immured.  
>  I solemnly charge all of you, under pain of disgrace and exile, to observe the quarantine of this Hold, and to refrain from contact with any others until such time as Master Capiam, or his delegate Masterhealer, rescinds the quarantine restrictions. I require obedience to all restrictions made by me to ensure the safety and health of Fort, Pern's first and largest Hold. Obey and we prosper. Deny and we fall."  
>  She turned the sheet toward us and pointed to the end. "His signature and ring mark are here to be verified." Then she insulted us again. "He charges me to discover which of you ventured perilously close to the internment camp today."

Nerilka has no qualms about stepping up, but when she does, so do other siblings. Nobody shouts that they are Spartacus, but the effect of confusing and aggravating Anella is the same.

Additionally, in the electronic version I see here, in the middle of the pronouncement is an image of a standing woman, holding an unrolled scroll, wearing a tiara, looking down smugly on a sitting man and woman, the man looking angry, the woman looking...dispassionate. Like she's pretending not to be interested so as not to give the smug woman the satisfaction of an emotional reaction of any sort. The actual description of Anella's clothes don't mention any head pieces, so we have to guess this is an embellishment from the illustrator. I, personally, would have put the illustration after the whole proclamation, but that's just me.

_[Images in e-text, as I find out, are extra fun to deal with if you're working in formats where the text can be re-sized at will. So I could be unfairly maligning this work and its formatting choices.]_

Also, what the ever-blistering fuck is going on here? If I wanted an evil stepmother plot straight out of a fairy tale, I'd go read a fairy tale. The only thing we're missing at this point are the evil and selfish stepsisters. The plague plot from Moreta had its fair share of taking care of prima donnas, most notably Sh'gall, but Anella couldn't be more cartoonishly evil at this point.

So, after this grand thing, someone snarks the quarantine by pointing out Tolocamp already broke it. And Anella demands that the children come up to the head table with her (but she can't name them all), as well as the Harper, earning herself another snarking about who requires the head table (and, by implication, who isn't so full of themselves as to need it). Nerilka vows to provide no help to Anella, and thinks that others will follow suit. She drinks quickly, eats quickly, makes sure the scraps from the kitchen get sent to the interment camp, and then heads to bed. That's Chapter IV.

Chapter V opens with news of dragonriders flying Thread, but Nerilka is suspicious of the numbers reported, because there wouldn't be enough riders based on the casualty reports. Before she can puzzle out the meaning of the message, she hits the kitchens for klah, with the obligation to keep Felim on an even keel after he suffered insult from Anella about not having enough sweets on hand. Nerilka wants to let the new Lady Holder learn what a bad idea it is to aggravate your cook.

And then realizes what Lady Holder really means, and swiftly hustles off to remove journals that contain sensitive data about the residents and to take Pendra's personal jewels for later distribution among the survivors. On her way back to the kitchens, Nerilka gets another way to paper cut Anella:

> I was on my way back when Sim intercepted me.  
>  "Lady Nerilka, **she** is asking for a Lady Nalka."  
>  "Is she? Well, there isn't one in the Hold, is there?"  
>  Sim blinked, confused. "Doesn't she mean you, lady?"  
>  "She may indeed, but until she learns to call me by my proper name, I am in no way obliged to answer, am I, Sim?"  
>  "Not if you say so, Lady Nerilka."  
>  "So return to her, Sim, and say you cannot find Lady Nalka in the Hold."  
>  "Is that what I do?"  
>  "That is what you do."  
>  He lumbered off, muttering under his breath about not finding Lady Nalka - any Lady Nalka - in the Hold. That is what he was to say. No Lady Nalka in the Hold.

Uh, Nerilka? What will happen to Sim when he delivers that message to someone who has already shown a contempt for things that don't go her way? And who probably has the same attitude toward drudges as everyone else does in the planet? Are you unconcerned about sending Sim in to likely be beaten and shouted at by Anella when she hears the response? Or do you think that Sim's possible mental difficulties will spare him from being hurt?

Or, is Nerilka not concerned because, despite knowing his name, Sim is still a drudge and not worth caring too much about. There's a lot of horrible people potential in this, but we won't see what happens and how things are taken.

_[This deserves a bit more attention, because, as we've established, drudges are not going to be treated nicely by anyone who comes across them, and it's already been established that drudges supposedly need help to make sure they bathe properly. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Anella goes into a rage about the lack of Lady Nalka and sets some terrible thing to happen to Sim because he very well knew who was being asked for and delivered the message to the right person, and then did what that person told him to do in delivering the message back. I doubt it would escalate to the point where Sim might be really seriously hurt, but since all we get of Anella from Nerilka's perspective is that she's an incompetent and she seems to enjoy lashing out at whomever she can, when she's not trying to be imperious with them, it's not beyond her to be the kind of person who will take out her frustration on whomever happens to be nearest and an acceptable target.]_

Returning to the plot, Nerilka goes to find the Healers, and is directed to the Hall kitchens to find Desdra, who is giving instructions for sterilization of glass bottles. Nerilka reflects on her increased time in kitchens (as befits her new station in the stepmother narrative), and Desdra's instructions say "no cheating on the sands", which gives us new knowledge about technology available to the Sixth Pass - sand-based timers in various divisions of time, presumably encased in glass of some sort. Which, in turn, says that the Pernese understanding of time is both complex and subject to arbitrary divisions. That's probably a holdover from the Ancients, but I wonder who or what the Time Authority is that ensures that the sands measure the same amount of time (within tolerance), regardless of the length of the day during any season. (And what they use as their official definition of time - Terra currently uses a definition in relation to the period of a cesium atom, but even Sixth Pass Pern has no way of measuring that.) Because, y'know, time traveling dragons should mean that temporal definitions and divisions should be strict at this point to avoid accidents and disasters. Yet it always feels like time is loose on the planet.

Desdra asks Nerilka to prepare a restorative soup and a cough syrup, tussilago (likely pronounced in the same way as "tussin" is for Terran cough syrups), scribbling instructions and measurements using a "charcoal stick", which means the "carbon stick" of the Ninth indicates more loss of knowledge from Sixth to Ninth. As she heads off, Nerilka can feel that the Healers are excited about something, and it's not just Capiam's recovery. When she brings back the completed work at the end of the day, the excitement is even greater, but nobody is saying anything. 

Nerilka heads to bed contemplating whether or not her work is going into the camps (if so, good), and how much more she will be able to do without the assistance of Tolocamp and Anella. And thus ends Chapter V.

At some point, this is going to create a more direct clash. Nerilka can't hide from Anella forever.


	4. No Fairy Godparents Here

Last time, Nerilka grieved for the loss of her mother and sisters and found herself usurped as the Lady Holder by decree of her father. While trying to be as unhelpful as possible to Anella, Nerilka has put the stash of storeroom herbs and plants to excellent use in service to the Healers trying to keep the plague under control. While this isn't directly contradicting anything yet, at some point Anella is going to try and bring Nerilka to heel.

**Nerilka's Story: Chapters VI and VII: Content Notes: Evil Stepmothers, sexism,**

(3.16.43-3.20.43)

Chapter VI starts with Campen guilt-tripping Nerilka into seeing Anella by telling her that Anella is "...making life very difficult for our sisters, and they miss our mother enough without having to put up with her carpings." Because wielding family members against each other is the highest road you can take in this affair, Campen.

Nerilka takes the beginnings of Anella's scolding in silence, relishing the age difference between them and the height difference between them to make Anella look buffoonish, but when Anella implies that Nerilka has been stepping out for sex, Nerilka sets her straight about her medicinal tasks immediately. Without referring to Anella as a mistress, out loud or in her head, showing a restraint she certainly hasn't had before.

Anella complains that nobody tells her anything, and complains further that Nerilka didn't come when she called, even though she messed up the name. After getting stonewalled by Nerilka, Anella demands her presence:

> "Your mother had everything so well organized in this Hold that I'm sure she had drapery stores and patterns. You may come with me to choose suitable lengths for my new wardrobe."  
>  "Aunt Sira is in charge of weaving."  
>  "I don't need the Weaving Aunt. I need your sewing skills. You have those as well, do you not?"

Oh, she _does_ have a name. How interesting that it wasn't mentioned before, in the context of all the other ones. (Okay, most likely it's an editing error.)

_[Except that's the Weaving Aunt, not the Wash Aunt, self, who remains unnamed. But it is nice to know that these Aunts do actually have names.]_

Also, it sounds like the Holds have official job titles for their older residents - in a single-family hold, they might all be aunts and uncles, but here at Fort, it seems likely that everybody's Aunt or Uncle (as was mentioned before when we were talking about the possible insult of "Old Uncle" - maybe it was supposed to be a term of endearment and respect for the character, but they just weren't treated that way).

Anella also gets the keys, finally, after Nerilka points them out, basically in plain sight, and then has to spend the time showing Anella around and explaining which keys unlock which items, including a "jewelry safe" (which seems a bit odd), growing more irritated with Anella's lack of knowledge about running any Hold properly. Nerilka also realizes that if she wants to get a good life and marriage for herself, she's going to have to get out of Fort Hold and out from under the thumb of Tolocamp and Anella.

After starting everyone on the duties of putting together new gowns for Anella, Nerilka excuses herself to see the Healers, learning about the serum inoculation in the process, and then receiving one as all of Tolocamp's family and Anella's family are also immunized. As she is immunized, she quietly directs where the leftover doses should go - Nursery adults, Harpers, cooks, Sira, and the bailiff, Barndy, and his son. (Is that a male name ending in a vowel sound I spy? Even though the y can be seen as a consonant, too.)

The presence of a bailiff tells us more about the administrative system of Holds, as those particular officers tend to be those executing the decisions of either nobles or courts. Since there isn't any sort of civil court system on Pern, we have to assume that the bailiff is acting to administrate the Hold on Tolocamp's behalf, when he can't be bothered to run it himself, and performs those functions like justice, collection of taxes or tithes, and the like. We haven't met one before because all our characters have either taken matters into their own hands or are of rank sufficiently high that they wouldn't be subjected to the bailiff's justice. Certainly worth wondering whether these bailiffs are fair and impartial, or whether or not they're doing things in the name of the Lord designed to ensure enough drudges exist.

The next day, as Nerilka and her sisters are required to help with the sewing of Anella's dress (while she criticizes them), Anella also talks about Tolocamp's latest instructions:

> Anella also had the poor taste to recount to us Tolocamp's injunctions to his bailiff and my brothers that there was to be no disposition of Fort Hold's stores to the indigent. All must be reserved for the needs of Fort Hold's dependents. This was a critical role, and Fort must stand firm, as an example to the rest of the continent. For instance, Anella relished reporting, Tolocamp was certain that the Healer and Harper would be applying to the Hold for substantial aid of food and medicine. He had received a formal request for an interview with Master Capiam and Master Tirone the next morning.  
>  That, for me, was the final straw. I had now come to the end of patience, courtesy, and filial loyalty. I could no longer endure that woman's presence or remain a dependent of a man whose cowardice and parsimony made a disgrace of my Bloodline. I would no longer remain in a dishonored Hold.

There's a couple things here. First, and perhaps the more petty of the two, I love idiomatic language as much as the next person, but "the last straw"? On a planet that may or may not have such a plant by name, and that usually is hostile to Terran names for things? This is why language is hard and you really need to think it through - I would much more easily believe "the last shell-crack" or something that communicates the intent, but that is more suited to the planet and society already built.

Second, and more importantly, who, other than a cartoonish Evil Stepmother, gains pleasure in telling someone that their plans are going to be foiled and that people are going to suffer? During a plague that is on the mend, potentially, and needs supply to ensure that progress isn't halted? Seriously, 

_[We have a cocowhat here.]_

Anella could not be a better example of an author tried to hammer home that she's a selfish and self-absorbed woman. And, incidentally, a perfect match for Tolocamp's own ideas. The author has hit the anvil hard enough that everyone at this point can see that Fort is not going to be heroic and is up to Nerilka to do something bold and brave and totally against her father and stepmother's wishes. All she needs is the magic carriage.

Nerilka heads back to the storeroom and cooks up more medicine, hides it in the storerooms, then gives the jewels meant for the family to Uncle Munchaun to distribute to the family, and goes to bed. The next morning is more medicine work, along with Nerilka changing into plainer clothes and cutting off her braids to make the transformation complete. With Sim and two drudges on standby, Nerilka listens in on the meeting we saw in Moreta, then catches up to the two Masters with the copies of the keys she has. The dialogue is the same from Moreta, as is basically the action where Nerilka disguises herself as a drudge and slips through to the internment camp, while Capiam is turned back away by the guard, who has had a name in this side (Theng) since getting assigned to border patrol back at the beginning of the novel.

Now clearly on the other side of the forbidden gate, Nerilka reflects while she carries supplies.

> Although she had not said so, Desdra undoubtedly had refused my offers of assistance because she knew that young ladies of Hold Blood did not engage in such activities on a public basis. She probably considered me a feckless, trivial person and perhaps I was: Some of my recent thoughts and decisions could have been considered petty. But I did not consider that I was sacrificing my high rank and position. I thought, rather, that I was putting myself in the way of being useful, instead of being immured in a Hold, protected and unproductive, wasting my energy on trivia like sewing for my stepmother. Such a "suitable occupation" for a girl of my rank could so easily be undertaken by the least drudge from the linen rooms.  
>  These thoughts fleeted through my head as I kept up the awkward gait I had assumed - ironic, as Hold girls were taught to take such tiny steps that they appeared to float across the floor. I had never quite mastered that skill.

Ah, yes, thank you for that reminder that we are hearing Nerilka's Story from Nerilka's perspective, and so pronouncements and judgments she has of the character and motivations of others may not be fully accurate. Anella could be a perfectly pleasant person transformed into an evil stepmother by Nerilka's grief and rage by the speed at which her father is remarrying and the love that Nerilka has for her mother and sisters. Nerilka could seem pushy, bossy, or flighty to others, but that would be translated as courageous here.

That said, the internment camps and the decision to cut off supplies to the Crafts, plus what we already read in Moreta gives weight that Nerilka is at least reporting accurately on the motivations of her father, and Anella's participation in this tars her with a similar brush. Nerilka may not be a fully reliable narrator, but she seems to be doing all right with the facts that we can confirm independently.

Second, this passage is a rich seam of information about Hold life and expectations for women of the Blood in a location not considered the ass end of nowhere. Which, much like Terran history, suggests that women are to be ornamental, and that the skills they collect are mostly less useful in a professional context and more useful at home (including that incredibly powerful skill of household management, though.)

Finally, though, we're back at this point where we have exceptional women against their counterparts. This has been a running theme all throughout the series - Lessa as outstanding compared to drudges, Menolly as exceptional compared to Hold women and sexist Harpers, Moreta as exceptional compared to other gold riders, Brekke and Sharra both as exceptional Healers and outspoken women. Even Kylara gets in on the action with her choices in partners and unapologetic sexuality. There's a bit of Conservation of Awesome, in that we have yet to have a narrative point where two women are being awesome together on screen (as Brekke is support to Sharra in The White Dragon), but a lot of these stories follow women who have skills that they have been able to train to high degrees and then finally find a situation where those skills will be put to use, usually in the absence of men who have been trying to suppress or control those skills for their own benefits. Nerilka is looking to join some pretty good company.

And if I stopped there, you could squint and take a look and maybe suggest that Pern had some feminism cred. But, you know, it just doesn't hold up under scrutiny...or by letting those narratives play out. And also present in these stories are the women these exceptional ladies are being compared to, almost always in some form of a rivalry sense. Menolly had to deal with Dunca trying to make her into a proper Hold girl and with Pona trying to make her feel inept and inferior at a different set of things. Nerilka gets them both combined into Anella for extra anguish. Both of these sets of women are to be overcome or avoided in some manner so that our heroic women can stay outside the normal social structure, and this accomplish their aims. It would have been nice to see the story of someone who is able to achieve great things by using the social structure in place, instead of having to be outside it to be effective. Or, that there could be more than one woman pulled outside the social structure to exist there comfortably without disasters, death or other negative consequences befalling them soon after doing so. And that there weren't women being used to uphold a clearly patriarchal society that wants to make sure that women never get anywhere near being taken seriously. The Crafts are probably the most egalitarian of the three castes, but they're not able to subvert the social order like they did for Terrans.

Nerilka is now theoretically beyond the pale, and thus, we get our first look at the camp, with "rude shelters" erected, and Nerilka happy that the weather was calm and gentle, instead of harsh, snowy, windy, and freezing, as it usually is. The delivery of the medicine produces Nerilka's first use of her new name, Rill, and a very strong statement from her about her father. The Healer gives Rill a warning about saying such things.

> "Young woman, it is unwise to speak of your Lord Holder in that fashion, no matter what the provocation."  
>  "He is not my Lord Holder," I replied, meeting his stare unflinchingly.

This is the third time we have had someone caution another person about dissing the Lord Holder. I don't actually know what the penalty is, though, for doing so, because everybody just says "don't do it." Banishment seems like a big deal, and we haven't gotten to the time period where Menolly and Piemur both live without Holds, but I would think that would be a spoken thing, not an implied one. What's such a horrible punishment that people are afraid to even speak it?

After giving a rundown of her skills, Rill experiences the joys of a twenty hour shift (hey, look, another arbitrary time division, and the implication that spending that many divisions at one task is not natural) as a nurse. For the next few days, Rill is happy doing effective and functional work, with death and bodily functions very close at hand to temper that happiness and provide a reality check. Then a journeyman Healer arrives with serum for inoculation and news that the camp is to be broken and moved to the Harper Hall. Rill volunteers to help move things, and the journeyman Healer, Macabir, thinks she would do well as a Healer apprentice.

> I volunteered, although Macabir repeated his wish for me to take formal training for the Hall. "You've a natural gift for the profession, Rill."  
>  "I'm far too old to be an apprentice, Macabir."  
>  "How old is old when you've a right knack with the sick? A Turn and you've done the initial training. Three, and there wouldn't be a healer who'd not be pleased to have you assist them."

Despite Desdra's existence, it's very hard for me to read this offer as anything other than "You'll be a nurse in no time! Don't expect to be a proper Master Healer, though, that's still for the menfolk." Because Pern is still that kind of place that would totally leave a very qualified woman as an apprentice or journeywoman, simply because she's a woman.

_[We're finding that out, too, in the SARS-CoV-2 panedmic, there are so many more women involved in virology, and nursing, and so many aspects of health care, supply, and making sure that everyone stays healthy. And yet, there are so many people who want to listen to less qualified dudes than the highly-qualified women. Or who are wasting precious time talking about the "attitude" the women are taking toward them, rather than working with them to knock down the plague as much as possible, because they're not willing to listen to women who don't take a deferential attitude toward them.]_

That's how Chapter VI ends, with the camp breaking down, and Rill getting ready to go out and see the world. Chapter VII stays with her on the way to other Holds near Ruatha, with serum for vaccination. She tries to sleep on the horse (without falling off, thankfully) and then sleeps in at the Hold she stopped at for the night, much to her initial annoyance and later gratefulness. One more Hold over, they keep her for a meal, and then send her on.

As she heads on, she ends up having to stitch someone back together, and gains a much finer appreciation of how much the plague didn't care at all who it killed. Before she can continue on, she meets M'barak, looking for more glass bottles so that they can make runnerbeast serum. He mistakes Rill as a Healer and invites her to Ruatha, where she wants to go, to help get the runners immunized. So it happens, and so it goes, and Nerilka gets to see Moreta arrive and experience her unplugged from the formal apparatus that had previously accompanied visits from Weyr to Hold. ("on state occasions", specifically, even though there are no official nation-states on Pern) only for a short time, though, and without actual conversation. Once Moreta and M'barak depart, Alessan and Oklina put Rill and her companions to work sterilizing and sanitizing their workspace for runnerbeast serum until Oklina guides Rill to bed and she collapses. So ends Chapter VII.


	5. Rehashing Old Ground

Last time, Nerilka fled Fort Hold, changed her name, and helped nurse the sick, before being shipped on to Ruatha to help out with the runnerbeast vaccination plan. After a thorough sterilization, we are go for serum creation.

**Nerilka's Story: Chapters VIII and IX: Content Notes: Sexism, judgment based on appearances, low self-esteem**

(3.21.43-3.23.43)

Chapter VIII starts with Rill and the two from her previous location working with Alessan, Desdra, and some other men to get all the runners in place and draw off their blood (Sal is a bit squeamish about this), package it into the transports, and then use the makeshift centrifuges to spin out the appropriate serum for collection. Oklina passes through with food at lunch time, where Desdra explains the necessity of nigh-simultaneous inoculation as the way the disease gets stopped from spreading further. After some care of the donor beasts (and a narrative suggestion that Fergal, Dag's grandson, has feelings for Oklina based on Fergal doing whatever she asks without any of his normal backtalk), Rill, along with everyone else, gets pressed into helping draw off the serum after seeing how Desdra does it once or twice, before being sent back out to run runnerbeasts back and forth to the bloodletting. She keeps her time occupied by figuring out how she would restore Ruatha once everything is done with the plague, a subtle nod to the end of Moreta, where we know that Alessan and Nerilka have gotten married, but that hasn't happened yet in this story.

As the drums roll in with orders for serum, Alessan explains he needs someone that can accurately list the orders, but Tuero is occupied and can't be spared.

> "Then have Rill do it." Desdra said bluntly.  
>  "Can you understand drum messages, Rill?" Alessan asked, somewhat surprised. I had been taken so unaware that I couldn't answer. I had even begun to think that Desdra had not recognized Tolocamp's daughter in grimy, sweaty, short-haired Rill.  
>  "And probably the codes as well, isn't that right, Rill?" Desdra was quite ruthless, but at least she did not explain to anyone how she knew so much about my unmentioned skills. "She can fill serum bottles between messages. She needs a bit of sit-down time. She's been going full pelt for some days now."

There's another one of those fun idiomatic phrases, but since there have been mention of sleeping furs, presumably there are pelts from which those furs are made. (Although the origins of how full pelt came to be are interesting and this may have been another choice of language that doesn't actually synchronize with the society presented.)

Despite having been basically outed, Alessan has too much on his mind to question how Rill, a "drudge who had risen to volunteer healer" knows such things, or why Rill takes over certain duties, like ordering other drudges and explaining things for maximum efficiency, that she had back in Fort out of familiarity. Nerilka admires Alessan's ceaseless drive and energies, and tries to help Oklina out as much as possible, seeing how much responsibility is falling on her shoulders. This is how Rill describes Oklina:

> She wasn't a pretty girl, which the uncharitable might say was one reason I related to her so easily, for the fair complexion and strong features that became a man suited her no better than my family resemblance suited me. But she was an exceptionally graceful young woman, with a charming smile and great, dark, expressive eyes in which lurked a sort of secret bemusement. I often caught her gazing toward the northwest and wondered if she had fallen in love with some young man. She would make an excellent holder's wife, young though she was, and I devoutly hoped that Alessan would not require her to remain at Ruatha, but would settle her with a kind and generous man.

She also notes that the work in creating the serum and the prestige of the Ruathan Bloodline won't hurt, either.

This description is much different than the one that Moreta gave us of Oklina, which told about relationships and her eyes, but not much else, which B'lerion, the shameless flirt, was making eyes at her. If she is as plain as Nerilka claims, then B'lerion is just being a flirt...or he's trying to find someone who may not have that great of esteem and trying to butter them up for other activities. I'd love to say that this darker interpretation is far-fetched, but this is Pern.

I'm also giving a bit of a side-eye at Nerilka saying that the Ruathan Bloodline will be a benefit, considering her own Bloodline hasn't apparently been all that helpful in securing suitors, despite being the oldest daughter of Tolocamp. Plus, Pern seems to be all about the prettiness of the ladies, based on Jaxom and others. Although all of the women mentioned so far that haven't died have all had something preventing them from being declared beautiful. Seems like a bit of an authorial tick, like they didn't want to write a woman that was both beautiful and talented for fear of the Sue Spectre.

After several days of difficult work, where Rill loses her sense of time, Alessan is able to declare enough serum created to cover everything needed, plus some overage for breaking. He tosses Oklina the cellar key and tells her to take Rill and collect wine for a celebration. There's mystical Benden white to be had, which Rill had never had, and Oklina asks her to stay on and help rebuild Ruatha, since she's pretty good at managing the Hold, and Alessan wants some trustworthy people on board. So the trusted few sit down to a celebratory meal, and Nerilka gets flirted at by Alessan, although she tells us that she's affected pretty heavily by the wine and the happiness of being able to stay at Ruatha. 

After dinner, Nerilka goes out with Dag and Fergal to see if one of the mares is going to give birth. After some pleasant conversation about possible marriages and proper assistants, the mare gives birth. Nerilka is now in the right place to rejoin the narrative that Moreta provided, by delivering the news to Tuero and helping both him and Alessan get to bed, while Tuero tries to remember why he knows "Rill".

Chapter IX begins the next day, with Nerilka continuing to attempt cleanup and organizing others to do the same, before dragons arrive.

> As Oklina rushed out to B'lerion with his supplies, I could not help but notice the way the bronze rider's face lit up as he slipped down his dragon's side. When she reached him, she halted abruptly to gaze lovingly up at him until, smiling a trifle foolishly himself, he took the serum from her.  
>  I felt a touch on my arm. Desdra stood there with the brace of packaged serum bottles for me to deliver to a rider. "Don't stare, Rill. It has been sanctioned."  
>  "I wasn't staring - not exactly. But she's so young, and B'lerion has quite a reputation."  
>  "There's a queen egg hardening at Fort Weyr."  
>  "But Oklina's needed here."

But Oklina is clearly star-struck by the dragon, and Alessan is willing to send her off. Because he's not willing to condemn her to a life of rebuilding and getting no excitement or suitors.

This is an interesting insight - Nerilka is leery about this possible situation because she sees the possibility of things going bad for Oklina. We still don't know what happens to queen candidates that don't Impress. Maybe she knows more than we do when she says

> I chided myself for criticizing my new Lord Holder. What right had I, save that of a concerned friend? But then I was good at seeing the bad side in everything.

After worrying for Oklina's innocence, Rill tries to calculate the speed at which the dragonriders are delivering serum, and realizes that it's not physically possible. Desdra knows why, but isn't telling. After everything is delivered (with the problems raised in Moreta), dinner is delivered - several wherries for the table. And Desdra apologizes.

> "You were right to come here, Rill. You were never appreciated at your former Hold. And I'd like to apologize for misconstruing your motive in offering your assistance at the Hall. Youd've been a rare, fine help to us there."  
>  "No, I would not have been allowed," I said, relieved that Oklina had moved out of earshot. "Here I am my own person, accepted on the strength of my own endeavors. I can be of use here, especially if Oklina-" I paused, not certain what I meant to say.

A neat double meaning on being allowed there. Tolocamp wouldn't have permitted it, but the Healers also wouldn't have believed that she had the necessary skill - which makes me wonder whether other professions have the paid students in the same way that the Harper Hall did. And whether those paid students would be looked down on similarly by those in the Craft. Clearly there's a market for Holder daughters to pick up useful feminine-coded skills so that they become more eligible to men. Who teaches accounting and running the household, though, I wonder. (Assuming it's not a thing one learns at Mother's knee while the boys are out learning...whatever they're learning.) So if Nerilka were to get in to the Craft as an apprentice (which she could, presumably, since Desdra exists), would she have had a Menolly-like journey through the rampant sexism that was present with the Harpers?

We'll never know. We learn that Campen and Theskin were out looking for Nerilka after she disappeared. Not Tolocamp or Anella, of course, because they still have to stay unredeemably evil. 

Next, though, is the tragedy of Moreta and Holth, which Oklina and Alessan both feel happen in their very selves, despite neither being a rider (but both having been Searched, which suggests they have the telepathic gift that riders develop, and both are attuned to Moreta through frequent contact - Alessan through having actually had sex with her on their future trip). The grief is sufficient for Oklina to pass out and Alessan goes basically into a grief rage, while Nerilka tries to stop him from hurting himself during his emotional outburst. And to rekindle her own silent rage against Tolocamp, living in comfort while the world had problems around him.

Desdra manages to get Alessan dosed with fellis to knock him out after Nerilka works out that Alessan and Moreta had been lovers, despite having only been gone an hour of elapsed time. Nerilka asks about it and gets confirmation from Desdra after getting Alessan into his bed (undressing him, no less, before doing so).

Here's a rather telling element, though, about the world she lives in, right at the end of the chapter.

> In all of Pern's history, no Weyrwoman had become a Lady Holder, though many Lady Holders had become Weyrwoman. Moreta had been nearly to the end of safe childbearing, but Alessan could have taken a wife as well. A Lord Holder could make his own laws within his Hold, especially to secure his Bloodline. Hold girls were raised with that precept firmly implanted in their brains and hearts.  
>  "Oklina's children were to be fostered here," Desdra said.  
>  "But that's not enough with all his losses."  
>  "You must tell him who you are, Lady Nerilka."  
>  I shook my head even as I grasped firmly at the thought, at that utterly impossible possibility. He needed someone pretty and appealing, clever and charming, who could rouse him from all the grief he had endured.

Everything flows only one way - Holds to Weyrs. Never the other way. Lessa ran afoul of this particular taboo in trying to control Ruatha after being taken by the Benden Weyrleader. It's still not clear why there couldn't be someone as Holder after Weyrleader. Maybe the Holders are afraid they'll all be taken over by dragonriders? Or that same attitude that shamed Kylara is a more pervasive one about how Weyrpeople shouldn't mix with Holders.

Also, "safe childbearing age"? The Healers know something about the difficulties of birth and the increased risk of certain conditions if a woman is older than a certain age? How is it that this has survived and other things haven't?

Also also, Rill continues to remind us of her non-pretty status, because we might make judgments about her based on appearances alone with regard to what we know already happens. Because we haven't been along for the ride with her this whole time, seeing her do the things she does, the intelligence on display, and the skills she has. All of that would apparently be instantly gone at the merest suggestion that Nerilka had gotten by on her looks. Which shows how little Holders think of women, but that isn't really being hidden. After all, those in charge of a Hold have absolute power to rule everyone however they like (like Meron saying everyone has to buy and burn coal), and super-absolute power when it comes to boinking by the Lord Holder. (This explains so, so much about Jaxom, Corana, and Sharra.) That every woman has it in their hearts probably means there's widespread beating going on to ensure that those women don't question their Lords.

I would like to know the rate in which Lords Holder die under deniable circumstances after they take a woman, get married, or "discipline" a woman for whatever offense. Whether by the woman or by a man who thinks his claim on the woman has been usurped. Fax cannot have been unique, nor Meron.

Chapter IX ends on the immediate aftermath of the Moreta disaster.


	6. At The Bottom of theNight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [At The Bottom Of Night](https://www,youtube.com/watch?v=pABDy9tzz1k), one of the more somber tunes available as the aftermath of this all winds down.

Last chapters, Nerilka found a new home in Ruatha, helping create lifesaving serum and taking on many of the tasks of keeping the Hold running with its skeleton crew. Nerilka seems ready to make her home at Ruatha, and might be ready to admit to herself that she has feelings for Alessan, even though she's convinced that she's not pretty enough for him to notice. The tragedy of Moreta happened at the end, sending Oklina and Alessan both into very strong grief. It is here we pick up again...

**Nerilka's Story: Chapters X, XI, and XII: Content Notes: PATRIARCHY, abandonment, sexual pressure,**

(3.24.43-4.23.43, then 3.11.1553 Interval)

Chapter X starts with the aftermath - B'lerion mentioning new rules and discipline imposed on riders to avoid a repetition of the issue, Tirone's Ballad of Moreta's Ride being altered, at the insistence of the Weyrleaders, so that Moreta is on Orlith, rather than Holth, and Desdra telling Nerilka about the secret of draconic time travel as the explanation of why things didn't add up on the serum distribution. Telgar Weyr suffers an undisclosed punishment because the other Weyrwomen are convinced that Telgar's actions caused Moreta's death.

And then there's Alessan. Who comes out of his fellis-induced sleep extremely unhappy at being drugged and without any sort of lessening of his grief. He wishes that he had been chosen as a dragonrider, so that he could just commit suicide, instead of having to live on, entirely aware that Rill will be one of many people tasked with making sure he stays alive.

Which pisses Nerilka off royally.

> "You may not want to live, Lord Holder of Ruatha, but you don't have the right to die!"  
>  "Ruatha is no longer sufficient reason for me to live!" he told me in a bitter, intense, angry voice. "It's tried to kill me once already."  
>  "And you have fought to save it. No one else could have done so much, with so much honor and dignity."  
>  [Alessan remains unconvinced...]  
>  "As your holder, Lord Alessan, I require that you have an heir of your Blood to leave behind you." I surprised myself with the vehemence in my voice, and he frowned as he looked up at me. "Unless you want Fort or Tillek or Crom Blood to hold Ruatha at your defection. Then I'll mix the fellis for you and you can quit!"  
>  "A bargain, then." With a quickness I hadn't expected from a man lying abed so wracked and spent with grief, he was upright, extending an implacable hand to me. "When you are with child, Nerilka, I'll drink that cup."  
>  I stared back at him, aghast that my rallying words had evoked such a response from him, stunned that he misconstrued what I had said and applied it personally to me. Then I realized he knew my name.

Busted. It appears that the disguise that Nerilka thought was excellent wasn't fooling anyone with a reason to know who she was. And now she's blundered into a deal with Alessan to have his kid before he exits the mortal plane.

Alessan tries to convince her that it's a sound idea, Nerilka won't believe that and asks Alessan how he knew (Suriana, it turns out, sketched Nerilka with regularity while alive. Perhaps the idea that they had a crush on each other is not so far out of the team of possibility?)

Then there's this:

> Then he snapped his fingers impatiently. "Come, girl, it is not so bad a bargain, to be undisputed Lady Holder of Ruatha, and no Lord to abuse you forever. You can't be afraid of me? I never beat Suriana. Surely she told you that I was a good husband to her."

Pern. The kind of place where men expect cookies for not being assholes. And the kind of place where after making what is essentially a suicide pact, a man expects to have sex with the woman he made it with. Alessan is apparently persuasive at this, and Nerilka would have had sex with him, were it not for Tuero entering.

The more we learn about the culture of the Holders, the more I'm wondering whether this is supposed to be either a parody or someone trying to out-Gor Gor. Because this entire setup of "men do whatever they want with the women in their life" just doesn't seem sustainable.

Anyway, Alessan goes to the business of the Hold with renewed energy, surprising everyone, who think he's taken a turn for the better, instead of trying to get his affairs in order to pass on the Hold. The matters of state take time and effort and are pretty successful, including Alessan announcing that Tolocamp gave his blessing for Nerilka to be his wife. Well, not really.

> Much later, I came across that roll, wedged in the back of a coffer. Tolocamp's actual words were: "If she is there, take her. She is no longer kin of mine." Alessan need not have spared my feelings, but it proved in yet another way that an essential goodness of spirit was imprisoned behind that emotionless facade.

Later on, after events that we'll talk about in a bit, Tolocamp sends this blessing:

> "Ruatha Hold swallows all my women, and if Nerilka prefers Ruathan hospitality to move, this is the end of her as my daughter."

> DARK HELMET: How many assholes do we got on this ship, anyway?  
>  [BRIDGE CREW all jump to their feet and raise a hand]  
>  BRIDGE CREW: YO!  
>  DARK HELMET: I knew it! I’m surrounded by assholes!

And so you are, Nerilka, and always have been. Tolocamp is apparently so incensed at the idea of his daughter doing anything at all that he's willing to disown his daughter, which might be even a few steps beyond Yanus's constant physical abuse to Menolly, although it's been pretty heavily implied that Tolocamp beat his children that much as well. If Tolocamp is supposed to be a comparison to Yanus, with Yanus coming out as the tame one, well, that's just a sign of how absolutely screwed up things are on the planet.

Everyone else is surprised at this revelation of "Rill" actually being a prestigious daughter of Fort. And Alessan basically rushes them into the marriage right afterward, since there is a Harper and witnesses present. Oklina is concerned that there won't be a ceremony or celebration or anything else for Nerilka, but Alessan convinced her that they don't have the money to spare, and so Alessan gives Nerilka "a gold marriage mark from his pouch and repeated the formal request that I become his Lady Holder and wife, mother of his issue and honored before all others in Ruatha Hold."

Of course the marriage vow explicitly says that Nerilka's duty is to be wife and mother and put on a pedestal. Because that's all that Lord Holders see women as - baby factories and trophies. Unless they're Searched, then they become companions for dragonriders and mothers and have to stay alive so that more dragons happen. No wonder everyone is so shocked at Fandarel employing women in his Craft - he's doing something unheard of in the society.

The marriage contact is a coin, interestingly, instead of a jewel, despite the presence of jewels, which arrive along with a small dowry chest full of marks from Uncle Munchaun. It seems like such a thing would be easy to lose or hide, should a Lord Holder decide he wants to step outside his marriage. Then again, from what we've seen and heard, it seems like an affair, even one that resulted in children, would be no biggie.

The news of her marriage brings a final satisfactory snark from Nerilka about her previous life.

> Uncle added with great satisfaction that Anella had been infuriated by the news, having been certain that I was hiding in a sulk somewhere in the Hold. Finally she had complained bitterly about my continued absence to Tolocamp, who, indeed, hadn't realized I was missing until that moment.

And is still willing to disown his daughter for having disobeyed him anyway. Tolocamp, you're more than an asshole, you're a Platonic form of asshole.

Now properly Lady Holder, Nerilka turns to the business of repopulating Ruatha by absorbing and choosing the holdless and younger sons from other places, rebuilding the supplies through ruthless fiscal management, and falling in love with Alessan, taking some happiness every time she has a period to prove that she won't have to uphold her end of the bargain. As the day of Oklina's candidacy approaches, Nerilka and Oklina both have to sew appropriate clothes, and Nerilka thinks she can occasionally see flashes of Alessan's depression easing. Thus ends Chapter X.

Chapter XI is the day of the Hatching. Everyone in the Ruatha party realizes that this day is going to be sad. As does everyone else in attendance - what would normally be a joyous affair is strongly muted. Not everyone knows that Orlith and Leri had already fulfilled their suicide pact earlier that day, but being on the Hatching Ground is a reminder of Moreta's premature demise.  
As the assembled dignitaries arrive, newly promoted Masterhealer Desdra is with Capiam, the two of them apparently a couple. Anella tries to put as much distance between herself and Nerilka. Then the humming begins, and all eyes are on the dragon eggs as they hatch. Bronzes, blues, and insight into Alessan follow, as Nerilka realizes that if Oklina gets the queen, it would reinforce the pattern of Alessan's life that loving and caring for things means losing them. When the queen egg hatches, it goes straight for Oklina, who welcomes Hannath with open arms and according to the same formula as all Hatchings have, with a proud declaration of the dragon's name. Nerilka is overjoyed at this, but it takes Alessan a very long time and a lot of expression of grief and pain before finally opening enough to explain his pain.

And as is customary with books that end with Hatchings (Which is more than a few of them, now that I think about it), there's the musing on the cyclical nature of life and death, joy and sorrow:

> "Today is Oklina's joy day. Nothing, not even old sorrow, should mar it. Nor, honorable Rill, will I require that cup of you." We had started down the tiers and he was watching his steps, so he did not see how near I came to tears again with this new pressure of joy in my heart. "There is too much to be done at Ruatha, now we have lost Oklina to the Weyr. I could not have stood in her way as my father did in mine. Now I am relieved that I did not. I had come to Fort Weyr to understand that lives end, and lives begin."

Which is eminently practical all by itself, but when you're in the middle of depression, any reason is a good one. And thus, Nerilka's narrative ends, and all that's left is for Nerilka to tell us what has happened in the aftermath.

That's what Chapter XII tells us - G'drel is Weyrleader at Fort, and _Wingleader_ Sh'gall isn't heard of much, if at all. B'lerion flew Hannath on her first flight, and two sons have been the result of that. Nerilka has been busy in the baby-making department herself, but it's really creepy the way she describes it:

> ...for I have fulfilled the first half of my original bargain with Alessan five times: four strong sons and a daughter we have named Moreta. Alessan will not have me overbear, though I keep telling him that I am happiest pregnant and never suffer as others have from being in that condition.

Really? That has a seriously Stepford vibe to me, coming from the daughter that hated being part of the Fort Hold Horde, in a society that still doesn't seem to have a lot of technology for helping make pregnancies less life-threatening, and that happily derided a woman that was in her Hold mostly for sex and babies, instead of any other reason. I don't like the implications that babies make strong women more submissive or happy about being pregnant.

The children, apparently, are thawing Alessan with their antics, especially the daughter, and so he's slowly starting to come back to enjoy races and humor, and his wife. They're well-matched for each other, and Alan publicly acknowledges her contributions and effort, a thing that warms Nerilka's heart forever, since appreciation is the thing that she's been wanting for all her life. So the story that started with tragedy ends with happiness, and Nerilka wishes the same happiness to others in the last line of the book. All's well that ends well, even if the underlying society still clearly has issues that will take generations to deconstruct and then replace, after generations of work to bring awareness.

The appendix offers drawings and maps to give visualizations of where things are and what Holds and Halls might look like in the exterior and interior. They're not as helpful as one might think, because they don't really provide a lot of mapping of the internal cave system.

_[In the original, because of the availability of materials, we spent significant time in First Pass Pern, but since this is the Director's Cut version, instead, before going back further in time to the First Pass, we'll take a quick stop at the last of the Sixth Pass Materials, Beyond Between. Prepare to have your conception of Pern knocked completely out of whack.]_


End file.
